The United States is sharpening its counterterrorism focus on Somalia, going after increasingly high-profile targets linked to a resurgence of the Islamic State terror group from its base in the Horn of Africa.
U.S. officials are concerned that IS-Somalia, as the terror group’s regional affiliate is known, has moved from being a key cog in the Islamic State global financial network to hosting the group’s top leader.
Top IS leaders “view Africa as a place where they should invest, where they are more permissive and able to operate better and more freely, and they want to expand,” according to a senior U.S. defense official. “So, they did bring the caliph to that region.”
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